Author – Abhinav Dwivedi

Gunpowder Please – Diwali cracker ban

Delhi witnessed a hattrick of dry days recently. Everyone’s WhatsApp was flooded with warning messages followed by consoling messages. Most Indians dealt with it in the burliest of fashion. A typical dry day anxiety struck Indian, who on any normal day, might have consumed a beer or two, treated himself with an entire crate. People lined up at the wine shops as if the shops were distributing free langar. People ended up shelling out a fortune for 42.8%, <8% and <6% of alcohol content in whiskey, super strong beer (a concept of beer only prevalent in India) and lager beer (the real beer sold across the world) respectively.

Wine shop owners were happy to get three days off with no business loss. They sold thrice the amount of liquor they would have sold normally in the pre-dry day days. Such a boost to the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan, made possible by the umpteen amount of germ-killing piss running in the drains the next morning.

The typical Indian idea behind all our festivals, public holidays and celebrations is to shut down the markets, search for terrorists and watch newly released (mostly crap) Bollywood movies or TV shows. To further enhance this feeling, we get uninterrupted electricity supply for the heightened couch-potato feeling. Ah! And once the day is over, one goes back to their boring 9-5 lives; curse their life, screw their wife; with even Facebook doesn’t care for a ‘like’. And the snoring begins.

Well pretty much scripted for most of the Indians and the script is worse than a depressing art movie.

Amid all this, we broadly get two major festivals, where we actually venture out rather than over drink in the screeching tranquility of our homes. That’s Holi and Diwali.

Holi has been hijacked by veer bahadur (courageous), mindless hooligans. A festival which is been licensed for public drinking and a compulsory road rage competition. Cops remain on high alert and the next day they get high under the shadow of hangover infested public at large.

Diwali just got struck with cracker ban and suddenly from the color of lights and colors it became a green Diwali. Bursting a few light-hearted crackers won’t harm anyone, rather than you going the dry day way; buying crates of crackers and launching a World War III on your neighborhood. So much so, that the smell gunpowder takes over your womanizer cologne (Wild Stone and Axe).

Few crackers here and there should be fine, until you make someone deaf or make the oldies suffer, especially the ones who are partially deaf and will have to spare their hearing aids for that day. Since some of us decided to behave like they have woken up after the bhang effect of Holi and are losing their nuts sutli after sutli (cracker after cracker).

I can only wonder what a state-sponsored firework must have been like on 4thof July or on Christmas. How these shows lit the sky blissful and tantalizing, and baaangggg! oh, that was an aloo bum deafening sound for us. Well, you can’t expect spectacular stuff from our hardworking state machinery. But hey regulate the fireworks, don’t ban them.

A little bang here and there, few rockets in the sky, shiny fountains, that’s the way we remember Diwali. It’s in our DNA, we have grown up waiting for those sparkles, we need them. Bet on it, with this ban and a tranquil Diwali, that noise of tranquility will be really deafening.

Besides ‘the Facebook green saviors’ can book hotels on the outskirts of the capital where hotels are offering refuge from Diwali. Imagine people all over the west running away to hotels on Christmas. Well dumbsters who are availing this refuge, it will be simple for them October 20th onwards. Go back to their boring 9-5 lives; curse life, screw the wife and hey shove that green shit with facebook rife; I would say get a life and “plant a tree instead”.

And for people who love the gunpowder flavor, comrades just don’t go the dry day way.